Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Maui 2017: List of things to do

05/26/2017-05/30-2017
Maui 2017: List of things to do

Plan! Plan it ALL!!

Another epic birthday long-weekend trip! Lucky duck. This year, we were lucky enough to be able to get away to the fancy and epic Fairmont Kea Lani in Maui, Hawaii. For this quick 4-day/4-night jaunt to Hawaii -- my first time to the island -- we had to plan well and carefully given the shortness of the trip. As always, my research was mostly based around food.

Oddly enough, I've been in San Francisco for 12+ years now, but never been to Hawaii! So many direct flights and often great deals to get there, and only a 5 hr flight, so it was a bit crazy I had never been there. Fortunately, basically everyone in my office has been, and multiple times at that! Many, many people had specific and intense recommendations, and I also cross-referenced with Yelp and TripAdvisor, the Fairmont Concierge, and many people who live on Maui, have family who live there, or have been 10-15 times to MAUI. Wow. So, tons of great recommendations. And as always with people from the Bay Area, most of the recommendations were for the best of all the foods.

The main takeaway I feel like is that everyone sells fish of all kinds: a fish plate, a fish taco, fish & chips, sushi, and poke. BUT... there are clear and obvious winners for each of those types of food. You CAN get it anywhere but there does seem to be some solid consensus about where is "the best" place. I laughed as the last day at the Fairmont I read a Maui yearly Restaurant Awards magazine, and it was basically an exact summary of the places we had chosen to go to over the past 4 days. Research: WIN. :)

And as always on these trips, as Edna Mode would say, "Luck favours the prepared". And prepared we were! I like to over-plan in advance and do all the Yelp and cross-checking and stuff when I am at home and can spend (waste?!) as much time as I like on it. When I'm on the trip: not a time for figuring out if the restaurant plan is good -- just a time to pick from one of the 10 carefully-verified-in-advance spots. So, the striking of balance between the usual "plan all the things" and "we should just relax and chill out" is always important, but I find with this amount of over-planning, once we get there I can more easily just chill and go with the flow, knowing I have an epic cheat sheet if it comes up "You know what, I really want some epic poke right now"... and on that note:

A quick summary of "the best fish places"

Best Fish Tacos: Coconut's Fish Cafe

Best Plated Fish Lunch: Pa'ia Fish Company (in Pa'ia, not the new one in Kihei)

Best Fish and Chips: Maui Fish'n Chips

Best Poke: Tamura's Fine Wine and Liquors (SERIOUSLY, this place was EPIC).

Best Sushi: Sansei (also a Karaoke bar! And great 50% off late-night specials).

Beach/Snorkeling/Surfing

Keawakapu Beach (southmost) in Kihei best Kihei beach for sunset, more secluded

Big Beach epic for sunsets

Malu’aka Beach -- only on calm days, lots of sea turtles

Snorkeling at Makena Beach, near hotel

Ho’okipa Beach (just to watch, lookout point on eastern side)

Molokini Crater Express Snorkeling

Swim-up Bar at Fairmont is epic

Boogie Boarding

Rent from Snorkel Bob’s Wailea - $7/day

Big Beach, 3rd entrance

“be SUPER careful! Big Beach shore break is NOT to be messed with -- Humility and eye on the ocean is key”

Grocery/Shopping/Farmers Markets

Farmers Markets

Maui Swap Meet Saturday morning near airport. Like Farmers Market also with local crafts and artisans, looks cute and fun: Sat 7am-1pm